The 2022 Spanish Super Cup will kick off in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the second time the Western Super Cup has been held in Saudi Arabia. According to the media, the winner of this Year's Western Super Cup can get up to 12 million euros in prize money, and Real Madrid and Barcelona can get 6.8 million euros just by participating, which will be a lot of income.
The teams participating in this Year's Western Super Cup include Barca, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Athletic Bilbao, and one of the main purposes of choosing to play in Saudi Arabia is money. Last season's Western Super League was held in Sevilla, and as a result, the total income of champions Bilbao was only 2 million euros, a gap of up to 6 times.
But despite the high prize money, Athletic Bilbao midfielder Raúl Garcia still thinks it's not a good idea to put the Western Super Cup in Saudi Arabia, saying: "Maybe I'm too old-fashioned. Football has changed and fans have been forgotten. Now football is all about making money and finding sponsors, and we forget some of the basics. atmosphere. The whole family enjoyed the game together, the tee times that suited the spectators, and football has changed a lot since I started playing. ”
Raul Garcia's remarks resonated with fans on social media. Indeed, the Western Super Cup was held in Saudi Arabia, so that the vast majority of their own fans could not go to the stadium to watch the game, and the Spanish Football Association obviously considered more economic interests. In today's normalization of the epidemic, clubs are facing difficulties in survival, and the proposal of the Middle East financial owners is difficult to refuse. After tasting the sweetness, it is not excluded that in the future, the Western Super Cup will be found overseas.
From another level, the current football does have a trend of "everything to the money", not only the Spanish Football Association, but even FIFA has moved the idea of hosting a World Cup once every 2 years, and in the final analysis, it is also to share a larger piece of the interest cake. But there are people like Raul Garcia who dream of "pure football" in football, and his words are enough to cause everyone to think deeply.